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Talking to computers aboard a spaceship has been a sci-fi dream for decades. From Captain’s Logs in Star Trek to Cortana in Halo, as humans we’ve done a remarkable job of personifying the non-human objects that populate popular fiction. But until very recently, that was just a dream in TV shows, movies, and video games.

Now we’ve got smart home assistants that carry entire conversations with us and features that let us do things like cast spells in Skyrim and speak to our crew members aboard the Starship Enterprise. In the case of Starship Commander though, is an entire game based around that single novel concept.

Starship Commander: Arcade from Human Interact appears to be the new name for what was originally just Starship Commander, which was announced almost two years ago. That appeared to be a larger, more full-fledged VR game, but instead what we’ve got is a trimmed-down experience designed specifically for VR arcades powered by Springboard VR and Private Label VR arcades. It releases at multiple locations in less than two weeks on December 10th, 2018. I played it on an Oculus Rift at home through Steam though, so maybe it will get released widely for consumers as well, similar to Haunted Graveyard. It’s unclear whether or not a longer, more feature-rich VR game is still in the works.

Since this is an arcade experience and is just about 10-minutes in length, I didn’t come in with high expectations in terms of world building or depth. This is designed to be easy to sit down and play without any prior knowledge or VR experience and for that purpose it excels wonderfully.

You don’t need Touch controllers, a keyboard, a gamepad, or anything at all. Just a headset, chair, and microphone. There is no main menu and there are no options to fiddle with. As soon as I boot it up, I’m presented with a prompt to say aloud, “Open the hatch,” and then it begins.

Visually it looks really nice in the headset. Textures are sharp and the effects are good with solid sound design. On-screen at this point is Sgt. Pearson, who is there to walk me through procedures and tag along for my mission to blow up some bad guys in space. She attempts to make some jokes every now and then, but most of them suffer from poor timing or awkward pauses due to what I can only assume is the voice recognition loading in the background. Her delivery feels a little flat as well.

Honestly, despite the minor clunkiness, these interactions with her before you actually leave on your mission are probably the best parts of the game. She does a good job of responding to commands promptly and gives off a decent illusion of carrying a conversation as long as you stick to responding accurately and not drifting off-topic. Apparently the game uses Microsoft’s “Cognitive Services” and tests your microphone levels before launching. The developers tell me the word error rate is less than 5.9%, which is better than an actual

Pavlov VR is one of the best and most popular VR shooters out there. It’s got an active community, tons of mod support, and some of the most refined shooting mechanics you’ll find in a headset. The gameplay is similar to Counter-Strike, offering fast-paced thrills with lots of action and a variety of weapons and game modes.

We’ll be playing Pavlov VR on Rift using a two Touch controllers. We’re starting right around 2:oo PM PT and we’ll aim to last for around an hour or more. We’ll be livestreaming directly to the UploadVR Twitch page where you can interact with us directly and chat among yourselves. Streaming is something we’re going to double down on doing more often very soon so you should get in on the ground floor of our Twitch community early! You can see the full stream embedded right here down below once it’s up:

Watch live video from UploadVR on www.twitch.tv

You can see our most recent past archived streams over on the UploadVR YouTube channel right here. There’s lots of good stuff there!

Let us know which games or discussions you want us to livestream next and don’t forget to follow the Twitch channel and sign up for notifications.

UK catalogue retailer Argos is offering a total of £100 off the Oculus Rift+Touch bundle on their eBay store.

The headset is £50 off in the listing, and then by entering the voucher code ‘PRESENTS’ in the checkout another £50 will be removed, bringing the price down to £299. The offer is only valid for collection from store — delivery is not available.

This is the best price we’ve ever seen for the Oculus Rift+Touch kit in the UK. If you knew someone with an Oculus headset you could get the Rift+Touch package for £314.10 on Black Friday, but if you didn’t the price was £349.

The offer doesn’t include the Marvel Powers United VR game which many other retailers are bundling, but that game is £29.99 so this is still the better deal.

Given that the Samsung Odyssey+ doesn’t ship to the UK, Windows MR headsets do not have the heavy discounts they have in the USA, and the HTC Vive is priced at £499, this represents one of the best deals we’ve seen in the UK for a PC VR headset.

Your least favorite ventriloquist dummy returns in the second installment of Krikey’s Goosebumps 2 AR trilogy. Slappy, the mean-spirited ventriloquist dummy with a serious Napoleon complex, is back in a new Christmas themed AR mobile game full of jump scares, manic puzzles, and that infamous giggle as he taunts you through the entire experience. The

Immersive training has the potential to make a huge impact on Ecuador’s education system. “ActiVaR,” one of the first technical training programs in Latin America, was launched at an event in Quito, Ecuador where 150 participants experienced VR and AR training techniques–many of them for the first time. World Bank GCS Interactive Media Senior Project

One of the main promises of virtual reality has been to replace or enhance the physical workspaces of today. What if monitors could one day be replaced with virtual screens of any size, shape, or viewing distance? What if your office setup could be floating in space?

For years now, PC VR users have been able to do just that. The first demo version of Virtual Desktop was released back in early 2014 for the Oculus DK1 built by a single developer, Guy Godin. With the launch of the consumer Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in 2016, the app fully launched on the Oculus Store and Steam for both headsets.

On Thursday, Virtual Desktop will release for Oculus Go and Gear VR. No longer will you need an expensive headset to access your PC in VR. As long as you have Windows 10 (or 8.1) and a decent router, you too can use your PC in VR.

Using Your PC From Anywhere

With the mobile Virtual Desktop, you can do something you never could with the original – use your PC from anywhere. Because the app streams your PC’s view over a network, there’s no hard limit to where you can use it. Want to read over your documents in the living room? Want to play your Steam games in bed? With Virtual Desktop on Oculus Go, I did all these things.

The Go’s rotational controller moves the mouse cursor by acting as a laser pointer. This is intuitive and works well — VR controllers are perfectly suited to this. However, typing by using the Windows on screen keyboard is not a good experience at all — it feels slow and frustrating for anything more than a few words.

Luckily, Virtual Desktop also supports bluetooth keyboards. I was able to pair a cheap bluetooth keyboard from Amazon to the headset and it passed through to the PC. This feature alone elevates the app from a novelty to a true utility. Without it, the app would be useful for watching videos on the Go without a separate file transfer, but with a bluetooth keyboard you can do real work too.

But Virtual Desktop isn’t just limited to your own WiFi network — the app works over the Internet too. As long as I left my PC on, I was able to use it remotely even from my friend’s house. This represents an entirely new capability for mobile VR headsets: a portable remote PC.

Ease of Use & Controls

Setting up the app was a breeze. There are no networking settings, no IP addresses to copy, and no real configuration to speak of. You simply download the ‘streamer’ app on your PC and enter your Oculus username. To grant access, the app on Oculus Go matches up what you entered on the streamer app against the user currently logged into the headset. As long as they are the same — you’re in.

The input scheme makes good use of the Go’s limited controller. Pressing the back button toggles between controlling your desktop

The bad news? One of our most anticipated VR experiences of the year is no longer arriving in 2018. The good news? It’s still not very far away.

Innerspace’s A Fisherman’s Tale, which is being published by Arizona Sunshine developer Vertigo Games, is set to launch sometime in January 2019, the pair announced today. The game had previously been scheduled for a late 2018 release but we’re not too surprised to see it slip given the announcement comes at the end of November. It’ll be released on PSVR, Rift, Vive and Windows VR headsets for $14.99.

A Fisherman’s Tale blew us away when we saw it at Gamescom earlier this year. “Overall the team is developing four main chapters with a prologue and epilogue to boot, all of which it reckons will take at least two hours to see through,” we said. “I feel like sharp-minded gamers will be able to run through it even faster than that, but the quality of the experience and its puzzles will more than make up for it. They say brevity is the soul of wit and, in the case of A Fisherman’s Tale, I’m pretty confident that’s going to be the case.”

The story-driven experience has some amazing tricks up its sleeve that you can see in the trailer above. Personally, we’re not watching as we don’t want to give any of the solutions away.

Startup Dreamscape Immersive is beginning its roll-out of location-based VR entertainment beginning with a premier location at Westfield Century City in Los Angeles followed by multiple locations in 2019 at AMC Theatres.

One of the physical props used in the entry room to Alien Zoo from Dreamscape Immersive during its trial run early in 2018.

I visited Dreamscape Immersive earlier this year during its Alien Zoo trial run and came away impressed by the sense of awe they and wonder they were able to create with an original story unconnected to any existing property — a departure from the strategy being employed by startup The VOID for its VR locations.

The Alien Zoo will be joined by an exclusive version of WEVR’s groundbreaking The Blu experience co-produced by the two startups, as well as Lavan’s Magic Projector: The Lost Pearl, all available starting Dec. 14 at the Westfield Century City mall. The location will ultimately house five “adventure pods featuring an array of exciting original and studio-based experiences that will be refreshed on a regular basis.”

Advance tickets to the Wesfield location are available starting today from dreamscapeimmersive.com. By mid-2019, Dreamscape representatives plan to launch more locations in partnership with AMC Theatres in Dallas/Ft. Worth, Columbus Ohio and the New York/New Jersey area.

“Dreamscape is about merging the scope and emotional power of cinema with the pure visceral excitement of a great theme-park ride — all within a totally new VR technology that allows our audience to enter into and become part of the story,” said Walter Parkes, co-chairman of Dreamscape Immersive, in a prepared statement.

Here are official summaries for the three initial experiences:

“Alien Zoo…offers guests the opportunity to travel to a larger than life, intergalactic haven where they come face-to-face with endangered alien creatures from across the galaxy. Upon arrival, travelers will experience the exhilaration of being able to play ball with exotic frogcats, pet majestic creatures, and, by working together, even narrowly escape the galaxy’s greatest predator.”

“In Lavan’s Magic Projector: The Lost Pearl audiences are offered a fundamental wish fulfillment: to step through the screen and become part of a movie. Once inside this heart-pumping adventure, participants will be challenged to unlock clues, escape treacherous traps, and work together as they discover the secret of The Lost Pearl.”

“In The Blu: Deep Rescue, Dreamscape’s breathtaking co-production with WeVR, an epic descent into the ocean to explore dazzling underwater worlds and aquatic life soon becomes an urgent mission to rescue a trapped baby Blue Whale and unite it with its mother.”

Shooting guns in VR feels natural at this point. When VR headsets first hit the market games like Space Pirate Trainer made novel use of motion controllers by letting us gun down robots and other enemies from inside the immersive, virtual realm. But now, almost three years removed from the debut of consumer VR, pointing and shooting is second nature for most. That is, until you add zero-gravity gameplay into the mix.

Lone Echo is a shining beacon of the possibilities with VR storytelling and Echo Arena was a groundbreaking moment for multiplayer VR games and VR as an esport with its Quidditch meets Ultiamte Frisbee in zero-G concept. Now with Echo Combat, Ready at Dawn is back with a new format for its renamed ‘Echo VR’ platform, delivering an Overwatch-style objective-based multiplayer shooter that pits two teams against one another with a variety of weapons and powers in free-roaming zero-gravity arenas. The results are truly intense.

Echo Combat is, in a nutshell, a team-based first-person shooter with the novel twist of each map existing in a zero-gravity dome environment. Tis means that many of the classic FPS tropes gamers are accustomed to are all here (recharging shields, objectives to capture or hold, different weapons, various abilities, etc) but feel unique given the medium and environment.

For example, in a game of Battlefield V I might hunker down behind a sandbag for cover and pop my head out to take aim at enemies approaching in the distance. There are some elements of elevation at play, but generally speaking it’s just a question of distance and aiming my gun in front of me. Echo Combat applies that same logic to a full 360-degree environment. While floating through the air enemies could be above, below, behind, or any variation around you. This is amplified by the fact that weapons have actual force knock back based on their kinetic force. That’s why holding onto a surface for cover and stability is essential.

But then that brings us to the most genius part of the entire Echo VR lineage of games: the grappling and movement system. Since it’s a zero-gravity environment you can push off of surfaces to traverse areas, or simply climb along walls and objects hand-over-hand like you would at a playground. That small action is immediately satisfying and immersive in a way no other locomotion system is in VR. You can further tweak movements with wrist rockets that let you boost around like Superman.

Most of that applies to Echo Arena as well though, what sets Echo Combat apart is the focus on gunplay. There are a handful of unique weapons, from an auto pistol, to a long-range rail gun, to a short-range burst shotgun type of gun. Loadouts can be further customized by selecting from different sorts of projectiles to detonate, as well as special abilities like shields, healing, or pinging enemy locations in the UI through walls.

There are two basic game modes (Payload movement with an Attacking and Defending team and control point capture

PlayStation VR fans might want to pencil next week’s Kinda Funny Games Showcase into their diaries.

Yup, our friends over at Kinda Funny are running their very own press conference-style showcase on December 8th at 10am PT as a fill-in for Sony’s usual PlayStation Experience show, which is taking a break this year. But, most importantly, the team’s Greg Miller recently confirmed on Twitter that there will be ‘PSVR announcements’ at the show.

Yes. https://t.co/vCtkOigQMb

— Greg Miller (@GameOverGreggy) November 27, 2018

Exactly what these could be we’re not yet sure but we’ll definitely be tuning in to find out. With Sony also set to skip E3 next year there aren’t going to be many opportunities to see surprise PSVR announcements at big events any time soon.